Business Administration

What do companies have to deal with when crossing national borders? This workshop takes a broad approach to learning about and discussing different aspects, challenges, and opportunities of global strategy. As globalization is expanding, all countries are host to foreign firms; thus, large multinational companies are not the only ones taking part in global strategy. This workshop is valuable not only for students who wish to work in an international setting, but for any student that wants to have a grasp of the modern business environment.
The course focuses on questions of strategy and organization, rather than issues or activities related to leadership, psychology, operations management, or finance/accounting.

This course illustrates marketing sustainability models and contributions, describes new relationships that marketing needs to support emerging sustainable business models, and depicts and discusses fundamental variables of the marketing process that allow students to define an operating green marketing strategy. The present scenario shows the advent of a new paradigm at a global level, encompassing customers, markets and companies and based on the concept of “Green Economy.” As a consequence, all managers are faced with new challenges: to fully understand the new paradigm’s rules on the one hand, to infer which might be the new paradigm’s impact in terms of managerial implications and market strategy, on the other hand. The green marketing course’s specific goals are to: single out the most relevant green economy theories and practices, having a deep impact on customer choices and companies’ marketing strategies, such as, for instance, the Cradle-to Cradle approach; develop knowledge as to green products and services’ “go to market,” in particular by identifying which are the key value-drivers generating “green demand;” analyze the green marketing’s key drives for growth and key drives for value; review “Marketing Fundamentals” ( STP, 4Ps, etc.) under the new “green perspective,” in order to make participants able to define a Green STP and a Green 4Ps; single out and analyze the most important, innovative Green Business Models along with their peculiar Marketing-mix; investigate green marketing strategies in selected contexts (B2B,B2C,B2G) and industries (e.g. automotive, retail and e-commerce, building, city planning, food and beverages, "controversial industries"...); and explain how to build up a resilient and successful eco-system, able to deliver a relevant added value to green stakeholders. It is recommended to have attended a course on basic marketing. The knowledge of the pillars of marketing as a discipline is expected.

The course broadens, and selectively deepens, students' understanding of finance, building on their existing knowledge of financial economics. The course covers a broad range of topics, with both a theoretical and an empirical emphasis. These include topics in corporate finance, investments and performance evaluation, and international finance. The course consists of two interchangeable ten-week components, one on investments and international finance, and the other on corporate finance.

This course provides an introduction to valuation. It introduces the concepts and tools required to price assets, value projects and firms, and make capital budgeting decisions under uncertainty. It discusses how risk analysis and simulation models can help with investment decisions, and introduces the concept of real option valuation.

The course contains the learning materials, practices and case studies to develop the knowledge and skills of the students in the field of data science and its application in the real business/work world. The students learn how to apply analytical techniques and scientific principles to extract valuable information from business data for decision-making, strategic planning. This course covers practical contents of statistics, machine learning, information visualization, and data analysis techniques through python programming language and other tools.

This course examines the central role that marketing plays in modern business and society. It studies the major phenomena underlying marketing strategy formation and component decisions of pricing, product planning, advertising, promotion, distribution, and personal selling. 

This course demonstrates the ways in which contemporary organizations navigate an increasingly turbulent environment. To achieve this, it combines necessary theoretical material with contemporary examples to convey the importance of, and different perspectives on, organizational change. The course covers topics including the nature and context of change, how individuals perceive and deal with change in a changing world, new ways of working, disruptive organizations and the gig economy, and the pivotal role of leaders in the organizational change process. 

This course is designed to assist students who seek to bring cross-cultural theory and research into their business practices in order to develop the intercultural competence necessary to interact confidently and successfully with Japanese businesspeople. Theoretical discussions and intercultural sensitivity workshops are included in this course to achieve these goals. The comparative approach allows for examining how people practice business differently, depending on explicit and implicit sets of general cultural assumptions, rules, norms, and values. The course aims to understand cultural differences in businesspeople’ s attitudes towards work, companies, and the relationship between individuals (colleagues or co-workers and clients/customers) and organizations (counterparts or partners). The course also seeks to understand possible cultural roots of Japanese business practices and behavior, highlighting phenomena that are only indirectly observable, such as harmony, loyalty, discipline, patience, respect for senior staff, and the importance of moderation.

A good mixture of lectures, class discussions, and workshops comprise the activities of this course.

This course explores the psychology behind entrepreneurship and innovation. The topics include the personality of entrepreneurs and exploring whether entrepreneurs are born or made; how entrepreneurs make decisions about risk and manage uncertainty; what drives entrepreneurs and what "returns" they can expect (in terms of income and well-being); what success means to entrepreneurs and what the ingredients are of an ‘entrepreneurial culture’. The course also reflects on how each one of us can act in an entrepreneurial manner and adopt an entrepreneurial leadership style. The course examines the psychological underpinnings of the entrepreneurial process and innovative behaviors within established business. 

This course deals with the basics of mathematical finance. The goals are to understand Option Trading and Portfolio Theory.

Prerequisite: Calculus I, II, Linear Algebra I, II, Sets and Topology I, and Probability Theory.